CN: Sexual violence
A recent dispute on Twitter, which I’m not going to link to, arose over the claim that a majority of men, given the opportunity, would choose to rape a nonspeaking autistic “pretty” woman. Their evidence for this wild assertion was that several men had engaged in consensual sex with a certain disabled adult woman. Obviously, this is no kind of evidence at all, and the claim itself is unfounded nonsense intended to stoke fears about “deviant” sexuality.
However, while not a majority, we certainly know that a great MANY men are, in fact, willing to rape disabled people. We know this because they do. It’s difficult to estimate how common sexual assault of nonspeaking disabled people is, but estimates from the National Crime Victim Survey, the American Public Health Association, and the University of Michigan suggest that between 67 and 90 percent developmentally disabled women have experienced sexual assault. Disabled men, children, and those outside the gender binary also experience incredibly high rates of sexual assault, but since the Twitter user specified “pretty women,” I confined my search to women. Also, since disabled transgender people usually have their genders invalidated, the statistics by gender may refer to assigned or perceived gender rather than actual gender.
In any case, willingness to rape disabled women is by no means rare.
What’s depressing to me is not the transparently false claim that “most” men would be willing to rape a “pretty” nonspeaking autistic woman, but the reality that more abled people are willing to rape a nonspeaking woman than are willing to engage in voluntary, consensual romantic or sexual relationship with a nonspeaking woman. More abled people are willing to rape a nonspeaking woman than are willing to publicly and openly accept a nonspeaking woman as a partner or wife. More abled people are willing to rape a nonspeaking woman than are willing to open a business with her, work for her, or vote for her for elected office. More abled people are willing to rape a nonspeaking woman than are willing to accept her as an equal member of society.
Increased risk of rape, sexual assault, and other forms of abuse occurs when people lack social, legal, or economic power. Wherever there is an imbalance of power, rights, or resources, those on the oppressed side will be vulnerable to abuse by those on the privileged side.
The solution, therefore, is to eliminate these disparities.
Moral panic about “deviant” sexuality, such as that appealed to by the Twitter user making the claim about a majority of men being willing to rape nonspeaking autistic women, argues instead for increasing these disparities -- placing “vulnerable” people under increased control in order to “protect” them. Of course, this has the opposite effect. When disabled people are placed in institutions “to protect them from abuse,” they are abused by institution staff. When disabled people are placed under guardianship “to protect them from abuse,” they are abused by guardians. When disabled people are placed under control of their families “to protect them from abuse,” they are abused by their families.
It is only when disabled people, and other marginalized people, are given the rights, status, and resources for full self-determination that they have some hope of escaping abuse.
Of course, helping victims escape abuse solves only part of the problem. The other part is the cultural mentality of many abusers, which frames disabled people (specifically in this case, nonspeaking disabled women) as objects to be consumed rather than full people to be interacted with. The protective approach, which would have abled people treat “vulnerable” disabled people as fragile objects, is contrary to this goal. Instead, normalize egalitarian interactions between abled people and nonspeaking disabled people in which both parties exercise agency and interact willingly. In other words, normalize abled people relating to nonspeaking disabled people as friends, colleagues, romantic interests, sports fans, or other social dynamics that are neither abuser/victim nor protector/object.
